Posts tagged ‘price’

In November of last year, the Victoria Real Estate Board released its MLS® Housing Price Index, or HPI. This is a statistical measurement that paints a more accurate picture of housing prices, by examining sale prices each month and using a data model to scrub outliers from the data set. Simply put, it is more realistic because it goes beyond the simple mathematic measures of average and median. Keep reading to learn more. Read more

If you want to start an argument on the Internet, or anywhere else, for that matter, start talking about the pros and cons of owning vs renting your home. It’s guaranteed to get people fired up on either side of the argument. Of course, depending on your level of debate, you might never get invited out with that group of friends again. There are points on both sides that make a lot of sense. Let’s take a look: Read more

Where did January go? A fun start to the new year, a short trip to New York, and a couple of snow days and all of a sudden it was February! I’m going to try to keep track of statistics for Sooke at the end of each month and post them here so you can follow along. Along with the numbers, I’ll give you my opinion of what the vibe is like in the market and what the other REALTORS® are saying. Read more

Driving home from a shift at Royal LePage’s Mayfair Mall kiosk last night, I heard a radio ad on CFAX 1070 for Sunriver Estates.

They are offering a “builder’s coupon” discount of $15,000 for purchasers. The popular planned community along the Sooke River is obviously experiencing a slowdown in sales like everyone else, so this is a great time to head on out and have a look. The ad mentioned getting a $369,000 brand new home for $354,000. It wasn’t clear from the ad whether this applied only to that plan or to any plan. The discount can be taken off the price or used for upgrades or appliance packages.

There are also 12 existing homes for sale in Sunriver, ranging from $349,900 to $500,000. Click the following link to view these Sunriver Estates homes for sale

If you are considering a new or resale home in Sunriver Estates and would like to be represented by an experienced agent, give me a call at 250-885-0512, fill in my contact form, or shoot me an e-mail at Tim@TimAyres.ca. My services are available to you, the buyer, at no cost; REALTORS® are paid by the seller.

Wine and Real Estate – Is There A Difference?

A recent study that was reported in the Times Colonist this morning suggests that people are highly influenced on their perceptions of quality by the price, which suggests that by simply pricing a particular product higher could influence its target market into perceiving it as higher quality than it actually is.

The study involved red wine – cabernet sauvignon – priced from $5 per bottle to $90 per bottle. Partcipants were given samples of the wine and asked to report on how pleasurable the experience was, while at the same time being measured for brain activity in the pleasure centre of the brain, the medial orbitofrontal cortex. The study indicated that the mere expectation of quality – being told the price of the wine to be sampled – caused the participants to report the experience as more pleasurable and created brain activity in the pleasure centre.

This got me thinking about how this could apply to real estate. Studies show that properly prepared homes sell faster and for more money. Some services will even furnish your empty investment property – called “staging” – to prepare it to wow buyers and sell for top dollar quickly. Any good REALTOR® should be able to show you how to prepare your home to sell.

But the principles in the study apply the other way around. Can you simply price your home higher than your neighbours and have buyers perceive it as higher quality? Market economics would suggest that you could not – but have you seen this, driving around a neighbourhood with a price list in hand? Will discerning buyers be attracted to your house, simply because it’s priced higher than the others around it? Will they assume it’s built better, has better features, is in a slightly more desirable location than its comparables?

In any market, there is a home that is priced higher than the homes around it. And often it sells just as quickly as the lower-priced homes. I think it is safe to assume that the market forces of supply and demand will prevent anyone from overpricing their homes just to attract high-end buyers. The higher-priced home must have had something about it that made it more valuable than the others.

The more intangible aspects of wine (the subtle differences which only a true connoisseur would notice) make it more susceptible to this kind of price-influenced perception than housing. Homes and real estate have more tangible features such as fixtures and finishing, decks, landscaping, views, etc. that even the first-time home buyer can discern.

P.S.: For a humourous look at this concept, check out this video from Penn & Teller’s BULLSHIT! show (warning: profanity). Fast forward to 3:10 or so for the wine bit, but the whole video is the same concept with food. They do a similar show about bottled water.

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This blog is administered and written by Tim Ayres. Tim Ayres is a licensed REALTOR® with Royal LePage Coast Capital Realty. Tim can be reached at 250-885-0512 or 250-642-6361. Questions? Suggestions? Visit the Contact Page and let me know.